As part of our benefits and well-being plan, Crema employees are eligible for an origin trip (a visit to a country that grows coffee) after 3 years with the company. Why do we offer this as a benefit? Besides being supremely cool to travel to a beautiful country, our partnerships with coffee producers is essential to our ethos. We rely on these expert farmers, processors and pickers to bring you the tasty coffees we offer. As you may have heard us say before, we are a small part of the larger journey of coffee from seed to cup.
This year, in addition to our head roaster and co-founder, three more of our own ventured down to the land of ‘Pura Vida’ a few weeks ago and visited our friends and Costa Rican partners at Exclusive Coffees. We got the inside scoop of this year’s journey from them and we're so excited to share their thoughts, feelings, and all that they learned!
Origin Trip Q & A
What was your most memorable experience from this origin trip?
Rachel K (Coffee Roaster): I loved the mills!! It was so cool to see the processes I’ve read about and taste the results of so many times with my own eyes. It’s so fascinating to see the machinery we’ve developed to process coffee better and faster, and to sort the beans after processing to make the best possible product. There were so many quality checks in the dry mills (Density tables!!! Color sorters!!!) I hadn’t heard of before. It made me really appreciate how much effort is put in to ensure we get to make the best coffee possible!
The mix of ancient methods (sun drying whole cherries in the sun) and new technology (like the visual spotter) was also so cool and inspiring. There’s beauty in ancient techniques, even while technology is improving around them!! I love this idea in pottery as well, it was cool to see a similarity here!
Barrett (Downtown Barista Trainer): The most memorable thing for me beside the cute farm dogs was getting first hand experience at the farms themself, I never realized how big and complex they were! Trying my first coffee cherry was also a magical moment for me. Also when we visited one of the farmer's mom's kitchen and shared coffee and snacks. It really was a peaceful and nice time of togetherness after so much learning and seeing of the farm; it almost felt like we were part of the family for a bit.
Perry (COO): Josue and Francisco’s farms were just stunningly beautiful.
What was the best thing you ate or drank?
Rachel K: Tbh I think my favorite thing I ate was the traditional breakfast at the cabinas we stayed at! Rice and beans, eggs, plantains!!!! And lots fruit and juice! So fresh and so delicious!
Barrett: I really loved everything I ate and drank. My favorite was probably the poolside rum, I also loved the plantain breakfast. I loved the experience of the farmers and guides grabbing fruit off a tree and it being the most sour thing I have ever tasted in my life, but I was happy to try something new!
Perry: Picnic Restaurant was such a pleasant surprise; everything I ate, drank and sampled there was so good. Also, one of the particular red pacamara cherries that I tasted was so bright and fruity.
Describe something beautiful you saw.
Rachel K: The way the mountains kept going as we drove was mesmerizing! Several times someone would point out coffee across the valley and then later on our drive we would be there looking back at where we had been before. I loved getting to see the area from so many angles, and all of them were different and beautiful in different ways. The fast moving clouds, quick glimpses of the coast beyond the mountains, and the lush green tropical plant life were always changing up the views.
Barrett: I loved driving around the mountains I could not get tired of it. Maybe that was the secret to never getting motion sickness? All the utility SUVs and trucks around the mountains were also such a vibe. But my favorite view was when we saw the sunset, and also how clear the stars were when we stayed in the cabins.
I also loved how happy everyone seemed, always greeting one another and they all seemed to be there for each other.
Perry: We met so many kind people on the trip. It was such a nice thing that, by and large, everyone was just good people. Also, Costa Rica is definitely a beautiful country.
Costa Rica is known for their innovative processing techniques. Any new coffee processes/trends that the producers talked about?
Rachel K: At Sumava farm they had fermentation tanks inoculated with Koji yeast!! Very cool! They also had a refrigerated truck they were using to rest cherries in a cool environment — there’s an infinite number of variables to play with!!
Barrett: I was very intrigued by the beans in the drudge truck. It was the black moon in there I think?
Perry: There was a ‘black moon’ process that got mentioned a few times, but never really explained. Also, quite a few varietals were planted in different parts of farms that seemed new to me.
What are some ways the producers practice sustainability in their farms/mills?
Rachel K: Oooo I loved at La Lia they showed us how they use the parchment they remove from the beans to fuel the giant dryer. They burn them to create gentle heat they use to ensure the beans are dry enough to dry process!
Barrett: I too loved the giant inferno made from the parchment that was very smart and impressive.
Perry: One of the farms realized that the runoff from processing could be sprayed onto a field that had bermuda grass, and that grass was then turned to hay at the end of the season.
What’s something about the coffee industry that you think about differently now?
Rachel K: I think waste will hit harder now. Ripped burlap bags spilling green coffee into the ground to be swept up and thrown away will be much more painful now that I’ve seen the incredible amount of work it takes to get them from cherries on a plant to our roastery.
Barrett: I always knew it was hard work but after being out on the farms and seeing them work so hard and seeing how difficult it is to even walk on a slope I have a new found appreciation for the efforts it takes to pick coffee!
Perry: Physically seeing the entire process makes you think about how each part operates and how interdependent so much of it is.
What would you want our customers, or coffee drinkers in general, to know about coffee?
Rachel: Every single bean is hand picked and countless people put in a lifetime’s worth of effort to create the best product possible! It’s such a privilege and a joy to drink such an intentional, thought out product! Omg also!! The coffee cherries are DELICIOUS?? I never really thought about the taste of the fruit!! You can eat them!! They’re super sweet and each varietal tastes so different! (Funky papaya! Crisp apple sweetness! Pineapple tropical explosion!! We were SNACKING!)
Barrett: It's easy to forget where coffee comes from and what people do and how hard they work get the coffee to us. A customer orders a coffee, they get it fast, and feel amazing and great, but the tedious hard work and community that goes into bringing that coffee to us is really amazing.
Perry: Multiplication matters. At every step of the journey from baby plant on a farm to picked cherry to processed bean to roasted bean to in your cup each process multiplies the value of the coffee itself. So the $8 our guests pay including tax and tip for a drink was a multiple of what we paid our roastery to buy those beans. When we think further backwards in the chain to how much work goes into all the steps before, which all similarly multiply value and then think about what the bottom rung has ‘left’, that is a sobering thought.
The fact that coffee in our current economic understanding of it effectively requires that there are humans adjacent to or inside growing countries that will spend a 10-hour workday in the sun with 50 pounds of agriculture strapped to their bodies to make less in a day than what we would pay for an hour of labor should make us all appreciate and respect the entire chain of work. All food should probably cost more than it does. (And also that the countries that house the farms and the laborers can not necessarily grow their economies to any grand extent, otherwise those humans would no longer pick coffee, the growers would no longer grow it, etc.) There are so many interconnected parts that require the movement of goods and people across borders to make it happen. So if the current strain of economic populism ever became truly widespread, coffee as we know it probably no longer exists.
